Renkl's sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported.

...luminous.

Everyone should have a friend like Margaret Renkl: thoughtful, engaged, compassionate and, above all, acutely observant.

Renkl’s essays confront the tired, flat stereotypes of a homogenous, conservative, redneck South, while acknowledging the kernels of truth from which they arise.

Graceland, At Last gathers a selection of Renkl’s columns from the past four years, inviting loyal readers and newcomers alike to take in Renkl’s perspective on the world.

Throughout the book, these fascinating columns both entertain and serve as reminders of big news events from the past four years.

Margaret Renkl’s collection of essays from The New York Times, unfolds like a 'patchwork quilt' of voices, stories, and perspectives from the American South, underscoring how the South is neither one entity nor one voice.

Through these warm and heartfelt essays, Renkl shows us how to keep on loving this complicated place, how to look right at its 'appalling truths' and gesture, still, toward hope.

Renkl honors the natural beauty of her lush roots while acknowledging the ravages of slavery still embedded in the terrain .. this lovely little book is bright, courteous, and informative, even lady-like, but then Renkl ventures into territory that more timid Southerners would avoid: sex, religion, and politics.

Renkl is a lovely writer, and to read her work is to be reminded that as a younger woman, she once aspired to be a poet. In one sense, she’s realized that dream; her lyrical sentences sing from the page.

Readers can easily home in on one of the book’s wide-ranging six sections, sample an essay or two from each, or barrel through from start to finish, as whim dictates. Renkl’s voice is calm, steady, and sometimes surprising..

These collected columns are not just a celebration of Nashville’s green spaces.

Originally written for The Times during an era of across-the-aisle appeals between friends and family, many of the essays are so brief they could fit in a well-articulated longform social media post. This brevity makes them especially shareable among loved ones and serves to combat the information fatigue so many readers experience when keeping up with the news.

Renkl vividly evokes the lush natural beauty of the rivers, old-growth forests.